The Power of Story

I spend a lot of time thinking about storytelling. I’m typically reading at least 3-6 books at any given time, and I’ll often watch two movies back to back on a weeknight. In fact, I’ve built a career around sharing the stories that I find in the world, through films, photos and podcasts. So I started wondering - where does this lifelong fascination with stories come from?

Human beings are just another earth-bound animal making the most of our short lives. Eating, sleeping, playing. There are reminders every day of how intricately we are woven into the fabric of the natural world, like ants on an anthill. But of course, there are some things that set us apart - things that make us unique and distinct from all other animals.

Our humanity is defined by our sentience: awareness of self.. recognition of the singular blessing of being alive. And this sentience is really just awareness of a narrative - a story at which we are each individually at the center.

That sense of story is innate - we are born with it. We dream in stories; we experience that longing for resolution to the conflicts in our mind, to get back to sleep so we can complete some goal; we know deep down what a proper story resolution is; we construct our sense of the world around us in stories, each little event carried by a beginning, middle and end. Stories allow us to make sense of the world around us, so our brain has a thread on which to attach the events of our daily lives and the world around us.

Stories are the most effective vehicle for meaning, often the only way to get people to care about something. A person in Nebraska might not care about climate change, but show them a film about a polar brown starving on a shrinking iceberg and they will care about the bear. Hopefully.

These stories that we tell have power - the power to inform, and the power to misinform; to communicate values subliminally in ways that data never can, couching it in the human experience so it resonates and gets internalized in our brains. But that pendulum swings both ways, as stories can also be used against us - weaponized in propaganda and manipulated with disinformation, spinning whatever narrative will sell the most ad space, regardless of how nuanced the situation actually is.

It is the responsibility of storytellers to tread lightly, bring integrity to the process, and tell the truth. Not Truth with a capital “T”, but the truth of the subjects within the story. It is our responsibility to wield this power gracefully, and to understand it’s nuances. Because we, as a species, are defined by the sum total of the story that we tell.

So let’s make it a good one.

In the field with Oregon Field Guide

Oregon Field Guide is a beloved institution of public access television in the state of Oregon, playing on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s TV channel and online. I’ve been fortunate to join the crew and DP on a number of shoots for the show, and each one has been a memorable adventure.

The show explores different outdoor stories around the Pacific Northwest, always told in thoughtful and cinematic ways without compromising on the traditional “news” style coverage. It’s a slightly different approach to cinematography from the documentary style that I bring to most of my other work, and I enjoy stepping into the fundamentals of the medium. But some things are consistent: the camera needs to be stable, building clear beginning/middle/end to each scene, and audio quality is paramount.

The first one I worked on was about the Mother’s Day tradition on Mt St Helens, where hundreds of people come from all over the PNW to climb and ski the mountain in colorful dresses. We climbed the mountain twice for this piece.

The second was a story about Mt Bachelor Ski Resort’s Adaptive Sports program, which helps differently abled people get out on the slopes. It was super cool to chase these adaptive skiers around the resort.

Then this year I was able to help out with two back to back ski shoots. The first one brought me back to Mt Bachelor to cover the resort’s Avalanche Dog Rescue Program, documenting the training process that turns these adorable pooches into specialized tools on the mountain. They’re also training their next generation of canines, and Shasta the puppy was a star.

Then we headed up to northern Washington to click in with professional mountain guides and biologists to set and review camera traps that are helping them calculate wolverine populations in the Pacific Northwest. It was quite an adventure getting to these camera traps in the backcountry in a landscape that I’ll not soon forget - the North Cascades. The cameras didn’t yield any Wolverine images on our trip, but we got to see dozens that they had previously captured. Having come from the University of Michigan, wolverines definitely have a soft spot in my heart. And we lucked out with conditions, getting a little bit of fresh snow to make the skiing fantastic.

It’s always a pleasure working with the Field Guide team and I’m honored to be a part of this longstanding staple of local television.

Production in the time of Covid

Filmmaking and video production are an endless learning curve, and I’m personally motivated by how much I still have to learn, and always will. But the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic have turned the volume up on every stage of the process. For development to post-production, but especially the production phase, everything has gotten more complicated. However, with the right precautions and safety protocols in place, I’ve been able to continue working in the field and on sets throughout the pandemic, operating cameras, directing, assisting and more. I have yet to travel beyond Oregon since March of 2020, but that has provided the overdue opportunity to sink my roots a little deeper here in the Portland production and advertising world, and the rest of the incredible communities in Oregon and southern Washington.

Favorite Documentaries of 2020

2020 may have been a hellishly intense introspective nightmare. BUT, it left us with an incredible year of documentary films. I don’t know if it was the ample down time to properly hone edits and find the right distribution partners, or maybe it’s just a generation of visionary talent approaching a zenith. Either way, non-fiction storytelling is in a modern Golden Age - an age in which I feel fortunate to participate and constantly humbled. 2020 also left me with more time to watch films, and I consumed as many as I could (many of which came through my IDA membership, which pays for itself with their member screening series).

Some of my choices are based on innovative new approaches to the craft, some based on social significance and timely arrival, and some based simply on charm. As a filmmaker myself, my opinions are informed by more than entertainment value, but I do assign that quality plenty of value. I’ve also given consideration to the films that are less likely to get attention based on sensation or lobbying dollars in an attempt to boost some of the underdogs. Finally, I’ll wax contemplative about the modern docu-series and list a handful of “honorable mentions.”

Favorite Features:

• The Reason I Jump

  • This was a profound and poetic exploration of what it’s like to be autistic, based on a book written by a teenage boy with autism. Through the experiences of a handful of people and their families, you get a glimpse into the minds that are often hard to penetrate in “real life”, which the film shows us is simply a construct of each of our personal experiences. The film is also an opportunity for the autistic community to participate in the conversation about themselves, which they’re often not given in today’s “TLDR” culture. It is beautifully shot, written, scored and edited. Highly recommend!

• Feels Good Man

  • This was a super fun film about Pepe the frog, the strange cartoon started as a stoner comic book character that was co-opted by the alt-right and turned into a meme representing hate, division and bigotry. The film follows Pepe’s original creator, a cartoonist who wants to reclaim the original vibes of Pepe - the stuff that Feels Good Man. It is an incredible exploration of meaning, semiotics, evolution, good vs evil, manipulation, and ultimately leaves you feeling encouraged about the future.

• Welcome to Chechnya

  • This one is heavy. “Welcome to Chechnya” is about LGBT+ members escaping from oppressive Chechnya where gays and lesbians are systematically killed by the government and their own families. Putin has installed a puppet dictator to the nation that has vilified LGBT+ members for the last ten years. A rogue group of activists works in the shadows to help anonymous victims escape the country, and the filmmaker uses Deepfake technology to hide the subject’s likenesses without compromising their depth of feeling. It is horrifying, informative and extraordinary.

• Crip Camp

  • I loved this film. Executive Produced by the Obamas, it is the story of a summer camp in the sixties that activated a remarkable crew of differently abled campers to fight for equal rights. The archival material is intimate and beautiful, the modern interviews are super fun and vulnerable, and I learned a lot about the Americans with Disabilities Act and everything it took to reach this important legislation.

• I am Greta

  • We’re all familiar with climate change documentaries and the familiar faces, scary science, and grizzly futures foretold. This film doesn’t skirt those tropes, but at its core it is simply a character profile of a young girl facing a world of criticism and challenge, shouldering the full gravity of the cause when she is hardly emotionally equipped - oh, and she has aspergers syndrome. This is the story of Greta Thunberg’s meteoric rise, meeting with world leaders, but also seeing her life as a teenager growing up in a scary world. My favorite moments were the quiet ones, when she might not have known that the camera was on her and she’s dancing by herself, lost in her own world of possibilities. Definitely worth a viewing.

• Time

  • This is an incredibly important film and should definitely be seen, it’s only at the bottom of my “must watch” list because I know it will get a lot of attention on its own. It is the heartbreaking story of a single African American mother raising her kids while trying to get her husband out of jail. Shot with interesting angles, jumping around in time elegantly, and expertly unraveling a story that never feels predictable, this is a tour de force that I hope gets the attention it deserves.

Honorable Mentions:

• Becoming

  • Michelle Obama. Period. This movie is awesome.

• The Truffle Hunters

  • This is a quirky, hilarious profile of a community of eccentric Italians who have devoted their lives to hunting for truffles in the forest. The cinematography is super interesting, with a Wes Anderson style treatment using static shots and symmetry, and the characters are amazing.

• The Social Dilemma

  • This is a sobering look at our culture’s descent into screen addiction and depression. Thesis: The more time we spend “together” on our devices, the further apart we actually become. It lifts up the hood of social media algorithms to reveal the insidious truth about their motives.

Docu-Series:

Tiger King, The Last Dance, Tiger, Don’t Fuck with Cats, et al

I’m going to have to write a further blog post about this because I’m still developing my thoughts… I enjoyed these series very much, but they all took huge liberties with their creative license and bent the stories to their will. They are incredibly entertaining, but also pretty irresponsible in their approach - much authenticity is sacrificed for the sake of entertainment. I’m not sure if that is wrong - it is, after all, entertainment - but I’m curious why it’s okay to take this kind of approach in a series, when a documentary feature would be chased off the stage for the same style. I think this is something we should keep our eyes on as docu-series continue to be more popular.

PS - This film was not finished in 2020, but I watched it early in the year, and I want to say: anyone that hasn’t watched “Three Identical Strangers” is in for a wild trip.